| SOGIN - Nuclear Plant Management Co
(Società gestione impianti nucleari)
Legal Profile Legal set-up
On 31.5.1999 Sogin has been incorporated by ENEL, the main Italian electricity company, in the framework of the re-organisation of the national electricity sector, set forth by the Italian law N° 79 of March 16th, 1999, "Implementation of the EC/96/92 Directive establishing community rules for the internal market in the electricity" sector.
According to this law ENEL came to assume exclusively "holding" functions, transferring operational activities to ad-hoc single companies, incorporated to this end.
In the framework of this re-organisation, as of November 1st 1999, ENEL made the spin off of the nuclear activities remitting to Sogin all assets, privities, and personnel connected to activities for decommissioning of nuclear power plants, for the fuel cycle closure, and to all other related and resulting activities, previously assigned to its department named SGN (Nuclear Plant Management).
At present, Sogin is no longer an operating Company within the ENEL Group as it has been transferred 100% to the Italian Ministry of Treasury.  old Sogin logo  new Sogin logo (2004)
Sogin activities
Sogin, Nuclear Plant Management Co, is a joint stock company responsible for the execution of activities related to the dismantling of the dismissed Italian nuclear power plants, to the back end of the fuel cycle, to the sites restoration and/or re-utilisation, and to the business development towards the market.
The main branches of activities can be summed up as follows: - the dismantling of the dismissed Italian nuclear power plants
- the back end of the fuel cycle
- the sites restoration and re-utilisation in order to valorize them with their connected assets
- the activity in the international market in the field of engineering services.
The main target is to complete the above mentioned activities acting in compliance with the guidelines of the Ministry of Industry, which are described in the document, "Strategic guidelines for the management of nuclear facilities" (14thDecember, 1999).
The scheduled decommissioning program related to the NPPs should be concluded within twenty years. Sogin, taking into account these guidelines, has provided the detailed programme. The involved NPPs are two BWRs (Garigliano, Caorso), a PWR (Trino) and a gas graphite reactor (Latina). They operated for decades with high degree of safety and efficiency.
In 1988, as a result of the popular referendum held in 1987, after Chernobyl accident, the Italian Government decided to stop the nuclear energy generation. Moreover it blocked the construction of Montalto di Castro (2 X 1000 MWe BWR) and Trino 2 (2 X 1000 MWe PWR) nuclear power plants, whose operation was planned to start in 1990.
Since then, preliminary decommissioning activities of the four plants have been started with particular emphasis on the disposal of operational radioactive waste. Now Sogin is carrying on the decommissioning program of the four NPPs, the waste treatment and characterisation awaiting for the final repository, the closure of the fuel cycle (dry storage and reprocessing management).
Cumulated funds transferred to Sogin from Enel at the date of its constitution were adequate to complete decommissioning activities within the Safe Store strategy. Following the separation of Sogin from Enel, a funding mechanism has been defined to provide resources for additional costs deriving from the different economic conditions (new discount rate and taxes), from the management costs for the new company, and from the change in strategy (from Safe Store to DECON).
Sogin has a levy equal to about 0.6 Italian lire on any KWh sold in Italy. Based on present consumption of electric energy, this amount is about 150 billions of Italian Lire per year.
Consultancy and technical assistance abroad
In parallel with its institutional activities Sogin carries out consulting and technical assistance activities in the nuclear sector, including activities in the framework of TACIS and PHARE programmes.
Personnel and costs structures
Presently Sogin has a work force of about more than 600 employees, which have been mainly inherited from the previous Company within Enel Group. All competence and know-how on nuclear engineering has been transferred to Sogin in order to give a continuity in the nuclear activities and to give a prompt start to the new born activities.
Sogin has defined a personnel management whose target is to acquire highly specialized personnel and to develop with proficiency both core business activities and consultancy and technical assistance abroad. Sogin intends to activate a programme based on an updating training and re-conversion process for its personnel together with a well defined hiring on particular competence.
source: European website on Decommissioning of Nuclear Installations
|
The only national site for collection of nuclear wastes in Italy,
italiano
english
francais
japanese
espanol
deutsch
ENGLISH REPORT
richiedi